Andromache- Greek FigureMortal"Wife of Hector"

Princess of Cilician Thebes

Andromache was a princess of Cilician Thebes before her marriage to Hector, prince of Troy. Achilles killed her father Eetion and all seven of her brothers when he sacked her homeland, leaving Hector as her only family.

The Scaean Gate

Andromache met Hector at the Scaean Gate of Troy, carrying their infant son Astyanax. She begged him not to return to battle, reminding him that Achilles had already taken her entire family. "You are father and mother and brother to me, as well as my husband," she told him. "Have pity and stay here on the wall." But Hector's honor demanded he fight, and they parted knowing they might never meet again.

When Hector reached for his son, the baby cried in terror at his father's plumed helmet. Hector laughed, removed the helmet, and kissed the boy, praying that his son would grow to be "far greater than his father." He handed Astyanax back to Andromache, and she took the child, smiling through her tears. Hector would die at Achilles's hands. Astyanax would be thrown from the walls of Troy.

The Death of Hector

When Achilles killed Hector beneath the walls of Troy, Andromache was in the palace weaving a purple cloak and had ordered the servants to heat bathwater for her husband's return. She heard wailing from the walls and rushed through the palace like a maenad — Homer's simile — and from the ramparts saw Achilles dragging Hector's body behind his chariot toward the Greek ships. She fainted, and the bridal headdress fell from her hair: the veil and diadem she had worn the day Hector led her from her father's house. When she came to, she mourned not only Hector but Astyanax, foreseeing the boy's fate — a fatherless child stripped of his inheritance, pushed from the feasts where he once sat on his father's knee.

When Priam brought Hector's body back from Achilles's tent, Andromache led the lament, cradling his head in her hands. She wept for him, for Astyanax, and for the city that could not stand without its defender.

After the Fall

When Troy fell, the Greeks decreed that Hector's son must die. Talthybius came to take Astyanax from Andromache's arms — the boy was to be thrown from the walls his father had defended, because the Greeks feared what he might become. She held the child and spoke to him for the last time, then let him go. His broken body was brought back on Hector's own shield.

Andromache herself was given as a war prize to Neoptolemus, Achilles's son — forced to serve the family of the man who had killed her husband. She bore Neoptolemus a son, Molossus, and endured the jealousy of Hermione, his wife, who plotted to kill mother and child while Neoptolemus was away. When Neoptolemus died at Delphi, Andromache passed to Helenus, Hector's surviving brother, and together they settled in Epirus, founding a small Trojan colony. When Aeneas visited on his westward voyage, he found Andromache still performing ritual offerings at a cenotaph for Hector — years after Troy's fall, still mourning the husband she had begged to stay inside the walls.